Jungman 2 Jungle: Getting there and the first day

To get to the jungle, one must ride a 12 hour bus, overnight, to the Cuyabeno Reserve. If you are the type of person who enjoys riding in hot buses for from 9 pm-9 am on poor roads with Spanish polka blaring in your ears the whole time, then this would have been right up your alley. I am not that type of person.
As I have mentioned before, Ecuador is a loud country. Contrary to the practice of most any airline that conducts overnight flights, the bus conductor seemed to think that blaring loud music all night might help people sleep, or make the journey somehow more pleasant. He was obviously quite mistaken.
Finally though, we did arrive at the reserve. After the passport checks by M-16 toting soldiers (What, in case someone tried to make off with a monkey?), Jairo issued us ponchos and life vests, and we took boarded the motorized canoe for the short trip upriver to the lodge. I was mostly thankful to be off the bus and in the fresh air. As we started off into the river, we passed though a canopy of trees growing in the middle of the water, with myriad vines hanging down. At this point, Neil rightly observed, “We are legit in the jungle.” Legit. Jungle. A start to a most excellent day.
During the boat ride, we observed some colorful butterflies and enjoyed watching Meliton (the boat driver, remember, if you haven’t read it yet, read the cast of jungle characters in the previous post) deftly handle the canoe with one hand and whack unwanted branches and vines with the machete in the other. We were greatly entertained.
We arrived at the lodge and settled into our rooms, with a few bats that resided there as well flying around to greet us. Fortunately, the bats were really not much of a problem. We were out of the room during the day when they slept, and they were gone for an evening of eating mosquitoes by the time we retired after dinner. Only in the early morning when they returned did we ever cross paths. We got along pretty well with our winged roomates.

I didn't mention this before, but from the moment we arrived in the jungle, it was raining. But of course, this is the RAINforest during the RAINy season, so we really should not have been surprised. Rain or shine (more rain than shine) we carried on with the plans for the day which included a hike through the jungle with Jairo stopping along the way to point out medicinal plants and other useful jungle oddities. Jairo honestly could probably survive in the jungle for a month without any supplies, just living off the land. We made "jungle rope" with some incredibly strong vines, we ate ants that live inside trees (they tasted like lemon), we found plants that do just about everything including help cure cancer, we even made jungle hats (see picture).

The whole time it was somewhere between steady rain to pouring, but I would still place it among my top 20 lifetime hikes. I really can't begin to describe all the interesting stuff we saw, but it was awesome in the true sense of the word.